Determinants of Turnover Intention of Social Workers

• Date: 01 March 2017
• DOI: 10.1177/0091026017696395
• Author: Hyun Jin Song,Yoon Jik Cho
• Published date: 01 March 2017
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0091026017696395

Public Personnel Management

2017, Vol. 46(1) 41 –65

© The Author(s) 2017

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DOI: 10.1177/0091026017696395

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Article

Determinants of Turnover

Intention of Social Workers:

Effects of Emotional Labor

and Organizational Trust

Yoon Jik Cho1 and Hyun Jin Song1

Abstract

This research explores determinants of turnover intention of social workers.

Retention of social workers is critical in the social welfare field because a high

turnover rate is directly related to the deterioration of service quality. Of the many

factors affecting turnover intention, this research focuses on emotional labor and

organizational trust. The former characterizes social workers’ tasks in that they are

regularly in contact with service clients. Surface acting, one of the emotional labor

strategies, has shown a negative impact on employee attitudes. However, representing

a psychological state of employees toward their organization, organizational trust

leads to positive attitudes and behaviors. This research also explores antecedents

of emotional labor and organizational trust. Interaction characteristics of emotional

labor are considered for the former, and supervisory support and autonomy are

tested for the latter. To examine the relationships among the variables, the research

conducts structural equation model analysis on 242 social workers in South Korea.

The analysis confirms that emotional labor increases turnover intention whereas

trust reduces it. The analysis also demonstrates that autonomy and supervisory

support enhance organizational trust, while surface acting is affected by the variety of

emotions displayed and the duration of emotional labor.

Keywords

turnover intention, social workers, emotional labor, organizational trust

1Yonsei University, Seoul, South Korea

Corresponding Author:

Yoon Jik Cho, Yonsei University, 50 Yonsei-ro, Sinchon-dong, Seodaemun-gu, Seoul, South Korea.

Email: yoonjikcho@yonsei.ac.kr

696395PPMXXX10.1177/0091026017696395Public Personnel ManagementCho and Song

research-article2017

42 Public Personnel Management 46(1)

Introduction

Employee turnover has been a critical issue of human resource management (Cotton

& Tuttle, 1986; Griffeth, Hom, & Gaertner, 2000; Porter & Steers, 1973). Although

recruiting competent employees is critical to building an effective workforce, of equal

or even greater importance is retaining those employees. Employee turnover is not

only the loss of human capital of an organization but also the loss of institutional

knowledge of the organization. That is, when an employee leaves an organization, the

intangible knowledge that he or she learned from the organization is also lost. To attain

comparable personnel, the organization should invest substantial resources such as

recruiting efforts and training costs (Balfour & Neff, 1993). The retirement wave of

the baby boom generation is inevitable to some extent because it is generated from the

demographic change. However, from a management perspective, the voluntary turn-

over of younger generations needs to be managed.

Although the retention of competent workers is critical in all organizations, retaining

social workers in nonprofit organizations is especially important because they mainly

determine the quality of the social services (H. Kim & Stoner, 2008; Mor Barak, Nissly,

& Levin, 2001; Watson & Abzug, 2010). This research focuses on the turnover inten-

tion of social workers in South Korea, where the inferior working environment has

been an issue. According to Son, Park, Son, and Kim’s (2015) study, the percentage of

Korean social workers having turnover intention is 63.5%, which is much higher than

that of the United States (43.2%) and New Zealand and Australia (28.9%). The 2015

Statistical Yearbook of Social Workers in Korea reports that 60% of social workers

already experienced turnover more than once, and one third of them plan to leave the

current organization (Choi, Son, & Shin, 2015). The main reasons for the high turnover

of social workers include low salary level, heavy workload, emotional labor, low-qual-

ity relationship with supervisor, and lack of communication (Choi et al., 2015).

Especially for emotional labor, during frequent contacts with service recipients, social

workers in Korea often experience violence from them. According to the survey by the

National Human Rights Commission in Korea, among social workers who responded

to the survey, 28.9% heard violent language from service clients and 14.3% experi-

enced physical assault (National Human Rights Commission of the Republic of Korea,

2013). Because of the inferior work environments, several social workers committed

suicide in 2013, which received national attention. However, the situation has not much

improved and few relevant studies exist.

This research seeks to fill the gap by demonstrating what factors influence turnover

intention of social workers as well as providing managerial prescriptions to retain

them. Thus, the main research questions include the following:

Research Question 1: What factors affect turnover intention of social workers?

Research Question 2: Which factors are worthwhile to obtain the attention of

social welfare organizations to retain their employees?

Although there are many factors to consider, including raising salaries and improving

the overall working environment, most nonprofit organizations in Korea suffer from